Uncompromising in its musical and lyrical attack of institutionalised brutality. This song was also released in edited form on the American promo, and fades quickly after the last line.
The theme of domestic violence against youth of "Barbarism Begins At Home" is transposed to school years in this lyric with clearly autobiographical references. Morrissey describes his own experiences at Stretford's St. Mary secondary modern during the mid-Seventies: "If you dropped a pencil you'd be beaten to death. It was very aggressive. It seemed that the only activity of the teachers was whipping the pupils, which they managed expertly."
In a 1984 TV interview on Channel 4's Earsay Morrissey also declared: "I went to a school which ultimately got global attention for being the most brutal school in the country for capital punishment... It was really quite an absurd school, working class, and the only thing you could possibly do was woodwork. Obviously when you left school you would go to a factory or something, there was no question of being articulate or reading books. I remember one instance when all the pupils were asked to write about their favourite book and I wrote about the dictionary. I remember I was virtually expelled for being so obstreperous and perverse. It was that kind of school!"
Funny how, a decade later, Morrissey wrote again about school, this time on the teachers' side in the eloquent: "The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils", a song included in his 1995 solo album Southpaw Grammar.